The construction and use of injection molds for high speed molding of plastic, rubber and similar materials is well known. Typically, production injection molds have two carefully aligned portions which have the negative geometry of the desired product. Production injection molds usually have a plurality of cavities. During the operation cycle, raw material is injected under pressure and simultaneously into each of the plurality of cavities and the injection mold is subjected to a pre-established thermal cycle. The thermal cycle transforms the raw material into a solid state having the desired geometric configuration of the manufactured product. The mold then opens, separating the two aligned portions and injector pins push or eject the molded product from the injection mold for further processing.
Prior art injection molds are typically configured to manufacture a single product configuration. When a different shaped product is desired or a similar product of a different size is required, a different injection mold must be fabricated.
The fabrication of injection molds requires close tolerance precision machining which is both time consuming and expensive.